Velmanette; Nozzolio

I. am. so smart! I. am. so smart!

Today marks the first day I attempted succeeded in typing up a paper and printing it out at the Computer Lab here on campus... mere minutes before it was due! Good thing and bad thing. Good: Now I know I can do this, while before I may have been nervous or worried I wouldn't be able to do it. Just a little gunshy about the whole thing, I think. Bad: Now that I know I don't have to necessarily be home to type a paper, I doubt I'll be finishing any assignment much eariler than five minute before the thing is due. I know me, and me is laaaazzzzeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Except when it comes to typing "e"s. Then I'm feeeeeeeeeeeerveeeeeeeeeeeeent.

The paper, if you care to know, was on two State Senators from New York, and their particular stances on various issues and how it looks reflected on their gender and blee blah blee... the point is this: Their names are Velmanette Montgomery and Michael F. Nozzolio. I mean... really people. Really. My name is that of a superhero, but even if you can't have an awesome name like me, can't you at least get a regular name? A utilitarian name? A nice Spartan monicker that won't cause people to vomit spastically as soon as they hear it? Velmanette? Nozzolio? It's like dialogue from A Clockwork Orange. Burgess couldn't have written it better. Even the founder of the Mormon religion was named Joseph Smith. True, Mormons... but even as a cult that Smith guy had a lot of sway. SMITH! HIS NAME WAS SMITH!

Nozzolio. Honestly. Velmanette.

From now on your names are Sarah WITH-AN-AICHE Montgomery and Micheal NO MIDDLE INITIAL Brown. Congratulations. Enjoy the normal lives and non-traumatic childhoods I've given you both.

The Mrs. has imposed upon me a deadline to finish editing in total the documentary I shot but never got around to actually putting together. God only knows how I'm going to get it done. Hard work, I guess, but who knows what the hell that is, in this day and country? I suppose I'll be giving up every weekend between now and the deadline, which, I believe, is in about three weeks. One hand comes out, holding my anxiousness and inability to achieve... my various psychoses and my almost crippiling self-defeatist nature. The other hand, palm down, holds dangling from my fingers the need and desire to finish the project. The overwhelming passion for creation.

I'm pretty sure this will end up like every project I undertake, every book I read and every class I enroll in. Really, every challenge I decide to go up against. It looks impossible, and I assume it's impossible, and I can't believe I'd ever actually be able to do it, but something makes me try, even to fail, just try (this time, it would be the love of my life in a quite insisting manner) and I get sucked into it and end up doing a good job at it.

I only hope I do it enough justice that Sho deserves. It's about him, so to make the documentary, after flying out to New York over and over again, and to not have it make him happy, or to not have it represent him accurately or appropriately would be a total waste of time. But then, I have a much different opinion as to the point or purpose of documentaries than most people. What really worries me in the possibility that, should I finish and should I succeed, the concept of the documentary may become expected of me, and fictional film, narrative film, is really where my heart lies.

Maybe I'm thinking too far ahead, though.

Goodbyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Surface Tension

I have discovered within my brain this strange association between bubbles and death.

At the place of employ, which (without going into too much detail, lest my whereabouts be known) is a "science museum" in "Southern California," we are exhibiting for the next three weeks our most successful and popular attraction of the year, which is a show performed by a certain "International Bubble Star," and whose show consists of "bubble elements" along with the respectably shameless promotion of his "patented bubble-making toys." You will never be able to crack this code. YOU WILL NOT FIND ME, GREGORIAT!

The man is obviously a story in and of himself. His life's work is bubble art. Not pictures made of bubbles or anything other-medium based like that, but the guy makes bubbles perform for you. He creates really quite beautiful bubble arrangements, does interesting tricks with them, really has a grand old time. He fills some bubbles with fog, some with cigarette smoke (Don't do drugs, kids! He will straight come to your house and put you in a bubble!) and he makes volcanoes and bubbles that bounce on the dang-dang ground and I have seen a square bubble form from his godlike whim. During the show, watching his face as he gazes upon his creations, you really get the feeling that this guy is Bublos, Greek God of Bubbles (though he's not Greek... no, that lofty classification is sadly lost to him).

He wears a semi-transparent, long-sleeved black shirt during the show. With slits along the upper arms. He's European, so this is all forgiveable. It occured to me that, were he American, people wouldn't put up with this madness for one second. It would seem frivolous, a man, completely sane and in touch with his consciousness, fooling around with bubbles like some lackadaisical schoolboy. Get a real job! Get a haircut!

But he's from Milan, he's Hungarian, and for a while he lived in Canada.

Oh. So that's okay then. God knows what those people have to go through. I only wish they could all become to lost in bubbles as to blind themselves from their hellish circumstance.

Anyway, I commented (as I am oft one to do) that I could die once I'd seen a square bubble, having been enamored with the concept (as aggresively as one could possibly be about any concept involving bubbles... anyone who's not Fan Yang) since seeing one blown by a pink elephant in Dumbo. You all know exactly what I'm talking about, damn it.

I know you do, GREGOR.

The man informed me that, not only could he blow a square bubble but, indeed, would blow a square bubble during his show. So, he said, don't die anytime soon. Slight chill.

And he did. As true as his word, he blew and I viewed a bubble cube-hewn. It was awesome, but he did a lot of other things that were awesome, too... and it seemed kind of dwarfed in comparison, as awesome as I, personally, found it.

Then, today, I was walking around campus, not feeling particularly stimulated after turning in yet another film exercise and dropping my two unnecessary classes perhaps prematurely but I simply couldn't sit around on them anymore with F's somewhere attached to my name and I'm in one class to make up for them but I'm waiting for the other notification to come in and I don't know how dropping them both with only one to replace them will affect my financial aid but at least twelve units is still a full load ow.... ow....

My brain.

I was walking around, these thing in the ol' noodly, when I suddenly thought (after having worked the Bubble Show all weekend) "I just want to go to work and watch the Bubble Show until I die." Because I like it a lot, you see, and because I am unreasonably fond of hyperbole. Anyway, larger chill.

So what's the deal? Why the terminal association with these light, frothy, airy little chambers? Is it the finality of life? Is it the inevitable conclusion all bubbles must face? Is it the thought process of seeing a man who has devoted his life to and defined his life by one singular thing so close to my own philosophy of purpose that I feel as if I'm merely looking thirty years into my future, and that the thirty years after that aren't too hard to see? How old is he, anyway? He's ageless. He is as old as the bubbles that broiled in the primordial sea, and as young as each new one he births from his soapy implements.

Of Death and Bubbles. I'm writing a book.

...

Also, "What Wings Do" would be a good title for something about Ameila Earhart. Or a horrible one. At any rate, it would be a title for something, wouldn't it?

I call him Gregor, for short. He hates it.

Articulation

The Mrs. and I went to L.A. today (a returning problem in itself) to visit the California Science Museum and its newest and soon-to-be-leaving attraction Bodyworlds 2. For those of you with... lives... the exhibit consists of people (bodies, more accurately) that have been "plastinated," or, for the layman (read: lives, having), preserved in a manner such that they are free-standing and accurate to their original appearance. Basically, it's like skinning some guy and then freezing him in time!

So there were a few neat actual specimens of real human beings that had had all their spoil-able parts preserved, one in particular I remember that showcased a rare variation in human anatomy called 'situs invertus' in which all the organs of the body are formed in a mirror image of what they should be. The heart is on the right side, the liver on the wrong side, the pancreas as well... which doesn't affect the body in any detrimental way, it's just really neat. Things like that, learning about the thymus, which is an organ only children have that eventually dissapates into the soft tissue surrounding it in a process called 'involution' and a particularly distorted spinal column are what interest me. But simply seeing these people, these dead people, that had been preserved and presented like animals in a diorama... well it's more an argument against the Natural History Museum than anything else.

I'm not saying I didn't like it, I did. I thought it was really interesting, I learned some, and I got to see what was essentially an exploded camel. The thing is, I'm not sure of the intention with which these people were preserved and displayed, and I'm almost certain it wasn't the same as the one I took away from it.

Now, obviously, they're being put forth as science, since the exhibit is taking place in a science venue, but there were some choices made (who makes them and why is a mystery to me) that can only, and generously, be described as 'artistic.' Just as you see one specimen that's been flayed apart up the back to view the posterior ribs and the spinal column, you see a man who's been cordoned off into sections that are relieved out of his body proper at seemingly arbitrary intervals, giving thought more to a Dali painting than scientific curiosity. What is a man pulling out what is essentially the 'drawer' of his viscera going to show me about the human body that H.R. Geiger can't tell me?

The IMAX movie was probably my favorite part, seeing the interesting models they built, but, more importantly, seeing the actual 'field' shooting htat had been done. In an IMAX theatre, a million feet tall, roughly, and on 70 millimeter print, I saw video of a neuron actually firing! The fucker fired, man! You can see the color change, even through the highly pixellated image! That alone was worth the money. That, along with the hyperbolic parabaloid they have in the main rotunda... well, it was pretty awesome all around, I was just confused as to the Bodyworld's creator's motivations, and their lack of a forthcoming explanation.

The Museum itself, while obviously much more impressive than my personal place of employ, seems to have a lot of empty space once you get inside. There are at least three floors that I can see, but in what I saw making my way from floor to floor and looking around as I did, it seemed that they had one exhibit for every 200 sq. feet of space... which was a huge waste. Honestly, it seemed as if we had more exhibits in our less-stories, less-square-feet center than they did in their publicly-funded, park-inhabiting gradeur. Bully for us.

On top of that, I had to drive to damn ol' L.A. Now, I love L.A., in the sense that I am a Southern Californian and would rather choke on a bottle of tanning lotion than admit to anything other than a clinging, feverish love for my homeland. It is only through analogous weather conditions that I have been able to maintain synonymous ardor for the Motherland (Hellas (Greece)). That being written, every time I attempt to pilgrim into the City of Angels I get lost, or I make a wrong turn, or I can't find parking, or something horrendously niggling while not horrendously horrendous happens and it's another bead across the cord for why I shouldn't go back. This time it was my own damn fault as I'd copied down incomplete directions (you wouldn't think leaving out only one freeway would matter so much... but live and learn) but still... the universe should take care of more important things than making my trips into more metropolitan areas near me so damned deleterious.

Speaking of the Mrs. (I suppose) we went through a pretty rough patch recently, and there were times I thought she'd finally had the ends of me, but we're back and better than ever. Whatever we may have gone through to get to where we are, I'm glad for a few things. I'm glad our problems were with each other, problems though they weren't, and not with people outside of our relationship. I'm glad we've been able to work through them by ourselves, if only because now I feel like a straight-up big boy. I'm glad I have someone I can talk to, really talk to, about anything and everything et al, regardless of how frivolous or debauched or non-sequitur it may-or-may-not be. And finally, I'm glad it's her. I'm just so damn glad it's her.

Today, while pretending to be flabbergasted by our inability to garner directions while en route to our destination, she commented that we shouldn't have to, citing that, "That's why God invented the internet and put it on phones."

Fuck I love that woman.

I'm the next big thing, people. Get on it.

And Iran, Iran so far Kuwait

In lieu of seeing my friend Anthony this Saturday (whom I seldom see anymore, our schedules rarely coinciding and he living in Los Angeles) I opted to spend the night with the Mrs. The wisdom of this choice notwithstanding, while visiting the friend he did end up spending time with yesterday, I was informed Ol' Anthony had left me something during his visit.

One; he'd left me a thing... this thing he left. This thing he left was a thing I'd given him three years ago... or some figure very near that. This thing, which he'd left, which was a thing, was called, "Oops a Daisy," and constituted largely of a plastic cow that, when you pressed down on it, would 'poop' out jellybeans. The other part of this "Oops a Daisy" were the actual jellybeans, colored a tasteful gradiation of brown and yellow. CLASS.

So I'm hanging on to that for another few years until I can give it back to him. I wish, at times like these, that I was either a wiz with machinery or magical, because it would be so much easier and, indeed, far more likely to actually happen if I could build a box to hold it, just a discreet one to hang on the wall (perhaps able to link with other boxes for similar purposes in order to save space) that, when a few years had passed, would spring open and deliver unto me the Poopin' Cow. Or... you know... do that with magic. The magical equivalent. You can imagine something, I'm sure.

As it is, I'm going to put it in a drawer and probably forget about it forever. Of course, I could only forget about it for a few years, then stumble upon it one day, laugh, and promptly give it back to Anthony. So that'll work out then.

The other two things he gave me, (gift-wrapped, no less) were Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and Viewtiful Joe for my Playstation 2.

This really isn't fair. The Mrs. didn't even buy these games, and yet she's the one who's going to have to do without me for another month or so as I finish them.

All kidding aside, bully for my buddy. Anthony's a credit to friends to come into money. Come into money... I should say squeeze money out of their very sweat glands. Anthony works hard, and he gets just compensation for it (perhaps less-than, in his opinion) and then he goes and spends so much money on his friends. I tell you... it makes me angry that I'm not more like that. I mean... choked up. It makes me choked up. Or... want to choke someone up. Something like that.

Anyway, I've been up since 11 (THE SUN RISES, DAWN IS UPON US) and playing Prince o' Persia since about then. Really, really fun game. I'm enjoying it. It makes me a little morose that the game is informing me that I'm already pretty much halfway through it. I doubt, once finished, I'll want to play through it again... but we'll see. Maybe when you beat the game it unlocks a level consisting of nothing but unlimited time-zombie demons and lots of obstacles and corners to vault and dodge off of. One can dream.

Viewtiful Joe, while not as critically acclaimed as P o' P, I have played before, and found to be wholly enjoyable. If nothing else, the game looks unlike anything I've ever seen. I'm looking forward to working through the fun of POPers so I can get to it.

Now that I think about it, and from what I can remember about Viewtiful Joe, these games both have something in common. Both have gameplay that directly involves the manipulation of time. I don't mean a simple Pause feature, either... You slow down time in both, and in the more Middle Eastern of the two you actually reverse time. Time time time. See what's become of me?

Thing is, Anthony's a programmer for games like these (not specifically, but the guy programs video games), so recieving a gift like this from him is kind of an oily, unmarked package, if you follow me. Brown paper. Tied with string.

There's every possibility that these are some of the games that have made it past the labyrinthine, deadly obstacle course that is Anthony's review system, and that these are some of the best games around. The boy is extremely picky about his games, as can be expected, so the games he's given me might just be some of the best you could possibly imagine! WOOOO!

On the other hand, I worry he may be using the games to feel me out. To gauge my reaction. What if they're crappy games, in his eyes, and I like them a lot? Does that mean he'll never respect my opinion again? Has he ever? What happened to Fibber McGee? WHAT?

At any rate, I'll be playing AND enjoying them both until more light is shed on the matter. I really do like the games, and I think they're an awesome gift. My friends rock. All of them.

QwikThot: (I'll be using this preface to denote sporadic and stacatto bursts of thought and consideration that come to me from now on. No, I am not sorry.) When does chili, through dint of the progressive addition of ingredients, cease being chili and become gumbo? Or is it the other way around? The questions that keep us from developing a cure for hunger, born here, in DeadLanguageLand.

I don't believe I'll be using that preface to denote anything ever again. Ever.

Gleaned from Today

The Chapman Education Business Department: A brood of grotesquely overweight women, behemoths who spend their days sitting on a pile of theoretical money, with nothing better to do to whittle away their monstrous existences than warily eyeing and proceeding to provide every possible pitfall in their little piggish imaginations for whoever would seek to claim their rightful share.

...

I thought my nose was whistling today in class. I experimented with it for a while, thinking it was because of blockage, but I noticed it only happened at the very apex of the inhale or the exhale. I didn't feel any passage closure at that moment, nor did I sense an intensifying of force of breath, and so, after trying for some time to figure out exactly what the hell was going on, I tried stopping altogether.

It was at this time that a shrill whistling noise began emanating from the guy next to me at regular intervals. I realized it wasn't me whistling when I breathed, but the guy next to me the entire time. Feeling more comfortable, I settled down into my normal state of sinal duress and, giving a powerful sniff I hoped would quiet any intermittent annoyances during class with one loud bother, let out a rather loud squeak from my nose.

I then realized that, yes, my nose was squeaking after all, as was the guy's next to me.

And then I realized that, without either of us knowing it, at some magical unintentionally synchronous moment, our noses were whistling in harmony.

You can't put a price on that.

...

The word literal, when referring to a figurative usage of a word, has lost its meaning within the flexibility of the English language. I can say "jump," meaning making both legs leave the ground... we all know that meaning of the word "jump." I can also use the word "jump" to mean moving quickly from one point to another of a certain object or perspective. Both definitions are correct uses of the word "jump." Now, if the object "jumping" (b) from point to point is actually "jumping" (a) as it moves from point to point, it can be said to be "literally" jumping from point to point. Does that suggest that one definition is false? That there is a "real" definition? Is there a default "literal" meaning for each word, or has literal just become another way of saying "grammatical play on words."

I despise the misuse of the word "literal." When I was a kid, my dad said that if the pound caught my dog, which had escaped, they would literally turn him into dog tacos. I was disgusted, not with the concept, but with the fact that my dad used the word like that. I remember being nine and saying, "Literally, dad? They'll really turn him into tacos?" and, after seeing how I was looking at him, he changed his story. I don't think he was trying to trick me, he was just misusing the word in a really ignorant way. I hate that.

Also, some little shit at work has been calling me, "such a white boy." And then, when I try to retort, he merely repeats the phrase, "You're being ignorant. You're being ignorant right now."

Idiots.

Some days, I wish I were never born. Others, I wish everyone else had never been born.

Enormous Girth

Well, enrolled or not, I'm attending the classes I'm trying to petition. This way I won't fall any further behind than I already am, but, more to the point, I'm happier in classes that actually challenge me rather than teach me things I have been tought eight times before. Watching films I've seen eight times before. Being told that Bergman and Lynch are great filmmakers... eight times before...

Just the same, it's good to be in challenging classes. I've been working exceedingly hard, and it occurs to me: am I just slacking off more than I should be, or does everyone work this hard in college? I really have no frame of reference, as my college friends are few and frequently imaginary, and my non-college friends... well... never went to college. I have trouble finding reliable sources on this matter.

Tired. Very tired. Just finished writing a paper reviewing Mulholland Drive mimicing the style of James Agee. Reading Agee's reviews really gives me hope about what my possible future could be with a degree in Film Study. I know a degree in Film Production is out of the question for me as far as any security I could derive from it (mental... stemming from the promise of job, that is) and Film Studies doesn't seem like much of a better choice, but scholasticism is a more demanding field, one that has set openings and recognizes talent rather than luck, persistance, and the knack of schmoozing. Oh, how I hate schmoozing. Thank God for my producers, whoever they are, that spare me the dismal task of schmoozing. If I never have to engage in schmoozing, indeed, if I never have to speak aloud the word "schmooze," I will die happily. At least in this aspect of life.

Having steered clear of Riverside being a completely other issue.

Which reminds me, I meant to include this Indelible. I know I've mentioned my feelings on this a few times, but I feel that this particular sentiment bears repeating.

IF I NEVER HAVE TO LIVE IN RIVERSIDE, AND CAN STAY OUT OF THAT GOD-FORSAKEN WASTELAND AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE, I WILL DIE HAPPY.

Lord how I dislike that place. I won't harp on it any longer... but sheesh. Riverside.

Sunday practice went well, especially considering it was one week following war, and the House is normally used to lazing about for a month or so on their excuses, having pizza-party debriefings and showing off minor abrasions. A good number of people showed up at the park (more than showed up at war, to be fair) and plenty of good fighting was to be had.

As a rule, I'm against the "training" sessions we are made to endure, not for any difficulty, but for the intense boredom I experience during them. However, after some prefunctory formation drills, we fell into two-man gauntlets and round-robin bridge mock-up battles that did nothing but test our skill as fighters and our stamina as humans. In one good run, I killed every member of the house in a row, I believe, and was finally killed by Ioan when I couldn't raise my arms to block his wrap. It was a great day, and, despite my banged-up forearm (see "abrasions" above) I felt fantastic afterward. Nothing makes one feel more alive than pretending to kill others.

Except perhaps actually killing others. I've never tried it.

On the subject of "more alive," I've been considering the concept of accepted unreality, how in the world of moving pictures and nano-sound-bytes and every little fake, convoluted ideal thrust upon us by society, we are no longer living in a world of reality, but rather are forging lives and living days that we ourselves feel detached from. At time physically, but for the most part emotionally and mentally detached from the world around us, the world we inahbit, the world we have built up to protect us. It is in instances of injury and disaster that this world is made to crumble and, though it may be frightening to us, it is the closest to real existence, without practice and the cultivation of fantasy-suppression, we can hope to get.

Get in a car accident. Get in a car accident so that afterward you are exposed to the air outside. A window is broken or a part of the seams in the doors has bent agape. Few things feel more real than a car accident. You're alive after a car accident. Even if you're only alive a little bit.

Lynch is actually starting to fester in a marinade of respect in my head. It worries me.